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James fought in WW2 but my grandfather William fought in WW1. He joined up as a 15 year old but under his mother's surname Robb and also under a false d.o.b. His true identity only came to light after he was gassed by German forces.

Some months before he died he sat me down and told me about his time in the war and as a young 8 year old I listened to his every word. To this day I have not told anyone else the stories he told, apart from the gas part and I probably never will as I just think he needed to get it all off his chest before he left us.

What was strange though is that he re-joined the forces as a regular in 1924 and served in India. That was also the start of our family members serving in the forces as my dad served as a regular, I served as a regular and I currently have 2 nephews who are serving as regulars just now.

What a fantastic picture Mo. It's great when you can put a picture to the faces of those who you are researching.

The oldest family picture that I currently have is of my great grandfather Charles Bryson and his wife Janet Ritchie Robb (Marion's cousin William's son). The picture looks to have been taken around the late 1800's to early 1900's.

I will get a scan done and will put up over the weekend.

Enjoy your weekend

Billy

Hi Mo,

I have just returned from Edinburgh and have looked at the Bryson/Crawford connection and I have taken photographs of the screen which does indeed link the 2 families, These include marriage search results and the date of marriage October 2 1709.

I will forward the pictures onto you via email shortly.

Hope all is well

Best wishes

Billy

Edit: Brysson/Craufurd wedding record number is: Parish Number 644-01, Volume 0250 and Registration district is Glasgow.

Jean Craufurd birth record number is: Parish Number 644-01, volume 0060 and registration district is Glasgow.

Hi Mo,

A family story I had heard was that a Bryson had divided his wealth between some sons and from there some had moved on. Apparently my line liked the beer and the rest they say is history 

I have taken part in the Bryson DNA project and matched other Bryson's. The markers showed that we shared a distant relative some 800-900 years ago. IIRC, surnames were not very common during this time and it was only the wealthy that had surnames, so this pointed to the Bryson's being a wealthy family, especially when finding a distant ancestor from such a long time ago and to this day we still shared the same surname. I did also have a very close match with the Bruce's which may have led to the Bryson surname coming about in our line (Bruceson - son of Bruce which over the years has become Bryson). I can't say this is accurate but to have such a close DNA match with their line and not other Bryson lines means that it may be a possibility.

It was also pleasant finding out about the Hutton's and who they were, we are lucky to have such an interesting tree and maybe one day we will be able to find out who the Hamilton of Wishaw is.

I work for Hibernian Football Club here in Scotland and we are in the Cup final this saturday against our fiercest rivals. We have not won this competition for 110 years and we go into it as underdogs. I'm hoping and praying that we win and if so, after a few days celebration i will then hopefully take a number of weeks off and from there I am going to get back to research and now armed with the latest Bryson details, I am going to search the records and see if I can trace the line back further and find out what the link is with the Hamilton of Wishaw. I'll keep you posted and hopefully it will be good news.

Best wishes

Billy

Hi Momamg,

I was delighted to come across your post as I am a direct descendant of John Bryson c1611 - 1672 and Jean Hamilton.

I too have hit a brick wall as to whether Jean is descended to the Hamilton family and just wondered if you got an answer to your question?

Kind regards

Billy